Daw Aung San Suu Kyi arrives at the 13th
ASEM Foreign Ministers Meeting in Naypyitaw on Monday. / Htet Naing Zaw /
The Irrawadd
YANGON — The Associated Press on Monday misquoted and seriously
misrepresented comments made by State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in
her speech to the ASEM Foreign Ministers Meeting in Naypyitaw. The
misleading report immediately drew the ire of the Myanmar Press Council,
which condemned the news agency’s “purposeful ‘misinterpretation’ with
an ulterior motive to hurt her image, and that of Myanmar.”
In her opening remarks to the meeting, the State Counselor said that
the world “has never been free from crises arising from multiple
causes.”
“Conflicts around the world are giving rise to new threats and
emergencies; illegal migration, spread of terrorism and violent
extremism, social disharmony and even the threat of nuclear war,” she
said, according to both an official transcript of the speech made
available to the media on the same day, and a live broadcast of the
event on Myanmar Radio and Television’s Facebook page.
But in its report on the speech, AP’s paraphrasing of Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi’s comments badly distorts the meaning of her actual words.
Summarizing the State Counselor’s comments in the story’s lead
paragraph, the AP reported her as telling the meeting that “……the world
is facing instability and conflict in part because illegal immigration
spreads terrorism, as her country faces accusations of violently pushing
out hundreds of thousands of unwanted Rohingya Muslims.”
Departing drastically from the original meaning, the report suggests
the State Counselor was blaming illegal immigrants for the spread of
terrorism. This is quite at odds with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s actual
comment that “Conflicts around the world are giving rise to new threats
and emergencies; illegal migration, spread of terrorism and violent
extremism….”
In a direct quote in the fourth paragraph, the wire story misquotes
the State Counselor as citing “Illegal immigration’s spread of
terrorism and violent extremism, social disharmony and even the threat
of nuclear war.”
To set the record straight, here is an explanation: Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi didn’t blame “illegal immigration” for the “spread of terrorism” in
her speech. “Illegal immigration” and “spread of terrorism and violent
extremism” are mentioned as discrete problems, not linked by cause and
effect. Even listening to the speech, there are audible pauses between
the two phrases. This is even clearer in the written transcript, in
which “illegal immigration, spread of terrorism and violent extremism,
social disharmony” are explicitly separated by commas.
U Aung Hla Tun, vice chairman of the Myanmar Press Council, told The
Irrawaddy that the AP’s account is clearly at odds with Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi’s actual words.
“It must be a purposeful ‘misinterpretation’ with an ulterior motive
to hurt her image, and that of our country among the international
country,” said the seasoned journalist who worked for Reuters for more
than two decades.
AP’s account of the speech rapidly went viral, being picked up by more than 20 international media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time, all of whom republished the story. It was widely shared on social media as well.
Mark Farmaner of Burma Campaign UK tweeted that
“Aung San Suu Kyi echoing some dodgy people by equating illegal
immigration and terrorism to try to deflect criticism over human rights
violations,” re-tweeting the following post from the Syrian Presidency’s
Twitter account: “President al-Assad: Terrorism will not stop here, it
will export itself through illegal immigration into Europe.”
U Aung Hla Tun said the AP should have stuck to Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi’s original speech, as this is a fundamental tenet of professional
ethics for journalists.
“AP must correct it as soon as possible and make a public apology to her and our country too,” the council vice chairman said.
The story ran uncorrected until late afternoon on Tuesday Myanmar time and the AP did not respond to requests for comment.
U Aung Hla Tun said this was just the tip of the iceberg when it came
to biased reporting by international media about sensitive issues like
the Rohingya in Myanmar. He accused the international media of
sensationalizing and misinterpreting the issue.
“There’re many other international media outlets that have been
tarnishing our image by deliberately publishing unethical reports.”
Discussing the international media coverage of the Rakhine issue,
Bertil Lintner, a longtime observer of Myanmar, told The Irrawaddy weeks
ago that Aung San Suu Kyi-bashing had become the name of the game in
the international media these days.
As an example, he cited a New York Times op-ed
in which Nicholas Kristof claimed that “Aung San Suu Kyi, a beloved
Nobel Peace Prize winner, is presiding over an ethnic cleansing in which
villages are burned, women raped and children butchered.”
The Swedish journalist said: “This kind of misrepresentation of the
situation, and ignorance of realities on the ground, is very damaging to
any attempt to widen the civilian space in Burma’s current
military-dominated power structure.”
In September, Al Jazeera, Channel News Asia and Reuters also
published inaccurate information and misleading pictures on the Rohingya
issue. Only CNA corrected its reporting.
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